ASU SoLS: Center for Biology and Society

This research project takes developmental biology in the twentieth century and approaches it from two scholarly angles—theoretical biology and history of biology. The project seeks to understand how the theoretical assumptions, analytical categories, and mathematical models of developmental biology arose in interaction with several layers of scientific, socio-economic, political, and cultural contexts. These include technical innovations in experimental design and mathematical and computational representations, social and economic parameters, such as those that determine patterns of scientific funding, and cultural values as they are expressed in views about embryos and the beginning of life. This research project thus focuses from multiple perspectives on agents of scientific change. Its goal is to understand these agents historically and conceptually and also to contribute to ongoing scientific debates.